The Adopt-a-Highway program is an occasional paid partnership between The I-5 Corridor and local businesses and people who want to help support local sports journalism.

Would you like to be featured? Get in touch at tyson@i-5corridor.com.

“ReFi Bri is dead,” Brian Tovey said with a laugh over burgers along Vancouver’s new waterfront. 

With interest rates as low as they were — coupled with the area’s booming housing market — the last few years were the busiest of the Oregon graduate’s career. 

But a catchy nickname doesn’t really work with rates going back up. 

What does work is experience and skill. Tovey has those — and more.

“I’d just like people to know that I’m a normal guy. I’m credible. I’m local,” he said. 

To that, I can attest. 

Tovey was there for the first game I ever covered at Oregon. We drove down I-5 together with our friend Jeff Smith to watch the Ducks beat Portland on a chilly Tuesday night. 

He was there when my wife and I bought our home in Portland, making something that seemed daunting for first-time homebuyers into something simple and straight forward.

I like to ask questions. Some in the Oregon press corps say I ask dumb questions. Tovey was happy to answer them all. 

When I launched The I-5 Corridor back in August, Tovey was my first paying subscriber. And when I asked him to lunch last week to bounce the concept of our Adopt-a-Highway program off of him, he jumped at the chance to help support local sports journalism.

He can relate.

“There’s a lot to be said for [local] in today’s age of internet lenders,” he said. “They’re cut-rate, right? But you kind of get what you pay for. It pays to have somebody in your corner you know and trust. People can just stop by the office and come on in.”

Unlike Tovey, The I-5 Corridor doesn’t have an office. But when we get there, we know who to call first.

— Tyson Alger

Get in touch with Brian Tovey at ReFiBri.com — the nickname may be dead, but you don’t just give up a domain name like that one.